


Run To You

by accol, Lasenby_Heathcote



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Steve Rogers, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Hand Jobs, Love at First Sight, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Oral Sex, POV Bucky Barnes, Parades, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prosthesis, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Switching, Therapy, Top Steve Rogers, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 11:00:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accol/pseuds/accol, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasenby_Heathcote/pseuds/Lasenby_Heathcote
Summary: What kind of idiot forgets that they're shipping outtomorrow?  The kind that meets the most aggravating, fiery, talented, selfless asshole at the bus station.  Good thing that asshole is patient, too, because recovery is hard.A story about heroes taking the hard road to a happy ending.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please watch for chapter warnings. See end of work for a summary of warnings.
> 
> One of Sam’s inspirational quotes adapted from #68 in _Life’s Little Instruction Book_ , which Sam probably could have written if its tone was more sarcastic.
> 
> Thank you to [Lasenby_Heathcote](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasenby_Heathcote/pseuds/Lasenby_Heathcote) for the amazing art that is embedded here. Your art was my first choice by far, and I hope I did it justice!
> 
> Thank you to nomorerippedfuel for beta and helpful discussions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Steve gets somewhat injured in a fistfight defending the honor of a friend.

Port Authority stank like dead fish, piss, and diesel exhaust.  The blast furnace of summer gave everywhere below 59th the same stink of rot.  Hell, everywhere above, below, beside, over, under...  Nothing and no one was safe from the stench of New York City in July.  

Right in the middle of that simmering heat was where Bucky saw him first.  

He was hanging off the back of a guy who had arms like a gorilla, trying to throttle him within an inch of his life.  Little blond guy, half the size of him, but that didn’t mean it was an unfair fight.  He had him in a headlock and was throwing every ounce of his weight into making the big guy suffer.  

It was ludicrous and hysterical and, Bucky had to admit, pretty damn impressive.  A David vs. Goliath bare knuckle fight might've looked like long odds, but Bucky would've laid down a fifty on that bet.  Nothing was better than an underdog story, especially not one as ferocious as this kid.  

“What did you say?” he was yelling.  “What’d you call her?”

Gorilla Guy’s face was red as a lobster.  “ _ He _ ain’t no  _ her _ .” 

The kid responded by jamming his feet into Gorilla’s lower back and pulling like he was going to pop his head off his neck.  There was easily 100 pounds difference between them, but skin and bones and justice were winning.

“Yeah, kid,” Bucky cheered. “Get him good!”

Maybe Bucky was imagining it, but it sure seemed like Little Guy’s grip tightened and his eyes brightened.  

“ _ She’s _ whoever  _ she  _ says--” 

Gorilla’s red face turned purple.  He scrabbled at the arm around his neck.  It didn’t loosen.  His eyes bugged.  He stumbled backward, panicked for air, crashing against the tiled wall and smashing Feisty (but Fragile) to shit.   

Bucky’s grin evaporated.  

Hero Kid crumpled like paper.  He lost his grip when the wind was knocked out of him.

“Christ!” Bucky hollered. 

Worry flooded him for a split second.  Then it transformed into a sudden flare of anger.  The other guy was winding up to kick his steel-toe boots right through-- 

“Hey, shithead!  You wanna go?”  Bucky balled up his fists.  He was ready to go one-on-one with King Kong just to have this stranger’s back.  

But Bucky’s outrage was drowned out by a stampede of clacking high heels.  No fewer than five handbags beat that guy down to the ground until the PA cops came running across the terminal, whistles blowing.  

Drag queens, man.  Don’t cross ‘em.

Bucky rushed over and crouched down on the tile.  “Hey, hero.”  

He seemed suddenly frail, like he’d lost the armor he’d been wearing a second ago.  Bucky’s anger faded and worry took its place again.  

“The cops are coming.  Gotta get you out of here.  Can you walk?”  

He was wheezing, but he nodded, eyes alert, and clung to Bucky’s shoulder with a strong grip.  Bucky scooped him up off the floor.  

_ Tweet! Tweet!   _ Cops thundered toward the scene. 

He and the kid would never make it out in time.  He ducked them behind a pillar.  Hero kid had a grip on the front of Bucky’s shirt and another on Bucky’s sleeve.  Bucky held him steady at the waist.   

Behind them, a few more swats and few more pointy-toed jabs.  Spitting and swearing, the girls left Gorilla laid out in his own juices.  

One of them -- auburn wig and thigh high vinyl -- leaned in quick to give Hero’s blond hair a smooch.  “Thanks, Stevie.  Gotta run, doll!  Love you!”  She looked Bucky hard in the eye and lowered her voice, “If you hurt Steve, I’ll find you and wedge my size 11 up your ass.”

_ Steve. _

Bucky nodded sharply and pulled Steve further into the low light behind the pillar.  He guarded him with his body like a hook-up in the shadows.  Donut-heavy guts jiggled past them, yelling for the queens to stop running.  Like they would.  They knew what’s what.  

Steve grunted against Bucky’s chest. 

“How bad is it?” Bucky whispered, giving Steve a quick once-over in the cramped space.  

He was cradling his side like a rib was busted. His lower lip was full and swollen on one side.  His eyes were scrunched shut.  

“Shit, you’re bleeding.”

Blood was oozing from a cut over his eyebrow.  Some had dripped down onto his t-shirt.  Pratt Institute, it said, School of Art and Design.  Older than he looked maybe.  

Bucky leaned out.  Gorilla Guy looked worse off than Steve did.  He was rolling and groaning feebly on the dirty floor. 

“You did a number on that guy.”  

“He had it comin’,” Steve answered, but his voice was tight and thin like he couldn’t get enough air.

“Coast is clear,” Bucky said.  “Let’s go.”

“I’m fine,” Steve said, wobbling when Bucky gave him space to move.  “You go.”

“You’re not fine, and I'm not leaving you here.”

“I  _ am _ fine,” Steve protested, leveling Bucky with a look like he was going to fight  _ him  _ now.  

“If you want to pick a fight, do it another day.  That’ll be fine by me.  Have at it, buddy.  But right now we’re getting out of here, and you,” Bucky jabbed a finger at him, “are getting patched up.  Stop arguing.”  

Steve wheezed out a frustrated breath.  “Fine.” 

Bucky hauled him out to the cab stand.  He whistled loudly and a hat-covered head popped up from one of the cars.  

“Buck, hey… What the hell?  Pickin’ up strays?”  Uncle Timmy came jogging over and helped prop Steve up.  His moustache turned down at the corners when he looked Steve over with concern.

“I’m fine,” Steve argued again, seeing the expression on Timmy’s face and returning it with a defiant look.  “I’m no stray.”

“What’s your name, kid?” Timmy asked. 

“Steve,”  _ rattling breath _ , “Rogers.”

“Well, Steve Rogers, I’m Timothy Dugan--”

Another moustachioed face nosed into their little crowd and interjected, “Call ‘im Dum Dum,” in a French accent.  “Everyone call zim zat.   _ Merde _ , what you get yourself into, kid?”

“Butt out, Jacques.  Go get my first aid kit out of the glovebox.”  

Before Jacques got more than a step away, Steve collapsed against Bucky’s side, eyelids fluttering closed.  

“Damn it!  We gotta take him for help,” Bucky pleaded, the worry back ten times worse.  

“Get in the cab,” Timmy said.  “We’ll get him to Presbyterian.”

“No,” gasped Steve, apparently not actually passed out.  Christ, he was a fighter.  “Too 'spensive.  Be fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Bucky and Dum Dum said in unison.

“Seen worse,” Steve said before slumping over again, breathing labored.

Considering what he got himself into back there, Bucky believed it.  

“Let’s get him up to Jim.  See what he can do.”

 

((☆))

 

Timmy laid on the horn every intersection and then some.  Sixty-something blocks of it uptown.  

Steve was laying across the back seat, head in Bucky’s lap.  His brow was wrinkled in pain.  Bucky had the urge to smooth the lines with his thumb, but he resisted. They didn't know each other like that. Steve’d probably grab his hand and crank on it ‘til the bones snapped.  The thought made Bucky smile a little.

“That was somethin’ back there,” Bucky said softly, not even meaning to say it out loud.

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Steve rasped, face reddening with renewed righteousness.  “I’m not gonna stand there,”  _ wheeze _ , “and watch some idiot throw slurs around like weapons.”

Bucky grinned again and shook his head fondly.  This guy.  

“I  _ suppose _ ,” Bucky said, drawing out the word to try to take Steve’s blood pressure down a few notches, “you were supposed to do exactly what you did.”  He squeezed Steve’s shoulder, hoping it wasn’t one of the places that was hurt.

Steve cringed a little when Timmy swerved around a bus and sped through a yellow.  Then he looked up at Bucky with guarded suspicion. 

“Why’re you helping me? You don’t even know me.”

Bucky shrugged.  “Name’s Bucky Barnes.  You’re Steve Rogers.  There, now we know each other.” 

Steve pressed his lips together and scowled.  He was hurting too much to respond.  His breathing sounded worse.  Worry clenched in Bucky's chest.

“We’ll get you patched up--”

“We’re here,” Timmy said from the front seat when the cab lurched to a stop.  He was jumping out before the car was done moving.  He lifted Steve out and put him upright on the curb.  

“Jim’s place?” Steve asked weakly.  “‘S good.”  His head lolled to the side and he was out.

“Shit,” Bucky said.  He took Steve under the other arm and they hurried him inside the 107th Street Clinic.  

Gabe was at the front desk, talking animatedly in Spanish to an elderly woman.  She was pushing a towel covered dish of food toward him and he was declining over and over with his broad, warm smile.  The sudden motion of them bursting through the door stopped their friendly debate in its tracks.

“Dios mio!” the old woman gasped, seeing Steve bloody and hanging there between Bucky and Timmy.  

Gabe’s face fell.  “Jim!” he called toward the back of the clinic.  “Need you up front!  Dum Dum’s got Steve.”

“You guys know him?” Bucky asked, startled.

Jim hurried through a swinging door and promptly lifted Steve’s eyelids.  He shone a penlight into them.  “He volunteers here,” he said, checking the pulse in Steve’s neck.

“Of course he does,” Bucky said.  This kid -- a buck twenty after a hearty meal, and half of that the weight of his heart of gold --  _ of course _ he’d volunteer at the free clinic in Spanish Harlem, of course he would.

“Bring him in back,” Jim ordered.  “Steve?  Steve, can you hear me?  What did you get yourself into this time?”

“Defending the oppressed at Port Authority,” Bucky told him when Steve, worryingly, didn’t respond.

“Sounds about right,” Jim said like it was definitely not the first time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None

“Hey,” Steve said. His voice was gravelly from disuse.  “Bucky.”

It startled Bucky awake from his fitful doze in the bedside chair.  He rubbed at his eyes.  “Yeah? I'm here, I'm here.”

Steve had a bandage over one eyebrow and was trying to sit up.  He wasn’t getting very far, cringing and cradling his arm over his ribs. Bucky sprung up and stuck another pillow behind his back.  He handed Steve a cup of water.

“Thanks.”  His breathing sounded better at least.

Bucky shrugged, trying to play it at least a little cool after flinging himself into action as soon as Steve said his name.  “Not a problem.”

Steve looked at him.  Really looked him over, soup to nuts, and then locked eyes with him like he was trying to see what was inside of Bucky’s brain.  

“Why’d you help me?”

“Because I’m not an asshole and you needed help.”

“No one ever stops to help.”

“Yeah, well, this is New York.  People are assholes,” Bucky smiled.

That got a laugh out of Steve (which Bucky liked, a lot), but the laugh made Steve wince (which he didn’t like at all).  Steve’s hair was matted with blood over the bandage.  Dirt was smudged along the line of his chin, or worse, maybe it was bruised.  He looked like shit, but the glimpse of a laugh from him brightened the little room.

“Jim says you volunteer here,” Bucky prompted.  He sat down again so the full force of Steve’s gaze on him didn’t feel so overwhelming.

Steve nodded.  “The clinic’s like family.”

Bucky’s eyebrows rose.  “Funny you say that.”

Steve made an expression that told Bucky to elaborate.

“Jim served with my Uncle Timmy in the Army.  These guys up here are my family, too.  Small world.”

“Huh,” Steve said, looking Bucky over again.  That guarded expression was back on his face.  “So by association you’re not an asshole.  That what you’re saying?”

“Get real.  This is New York.  We’re all assholes at least a little.”

Steve winced and laughed again.  “Me included, probably.”

“You included  _ definitely _ .  I heard you cursing out that guy while you were beating the shit out of him.”

“He deserved it.”

“I believe it, but you ain’t even smart enough to pick on someone your own size.”

“Deal with it,” Steve grinned proudly.  A true New Yorker.

It was Bucky’s turn to laugh.

 

((☆))

 

“Here,” Bucky said, handing over a cool washcloth.  “Thought you might want to, you know.”  

“Thanks,” Steve said after a second of just staring at Bucky again.  He took the washcloth and wiped a little at his knuckles.  “You’re a regular boy scout, huh?”

“Takes one to know one,” Bucky retorted like a schoolkid.

Steve scrubbed across his face, pinking his cheeks.  

“Did I miss any?” he asked, turning his face side-to-side for Bucky's inspection.

“Yeah, up-- no, over-- just give it here.”  Bucky held out his hand and Steve dropped the washcloth into it.  “Sorry if this hurts.”

“I can handle it,” Steve said.  He scooted over so Bucky could sit on the edge of the bed.  Steve’s eyes were the brightest blue.  

“I know you can, hero.  I’m just giving you fair warning.”

He made sure he got all of the blood and dirt off of him.  Hands and knuckles too.  Took it slow and gentle, even if Steve could’ve handled it.

 

((☆))

 

Gabe interrupted their loud debate about the Yankees’ starting lineup an hour later.  He walked in with a flan with a candle in it.  The abuelita from the lobby, the drag queen that’d threatened Bucky, Timmy, Dernier, and Jim followed him in, all of ‘em singing Happy Birthday.  

_ you look like a monkey and you smell like one too _

“Happy 21st, kid,” Morita said. “But no mixing pain relievers and alcohol.”

“Says you,” said Dum Dum, smiling broadly.  “This guy looks like he could use a stiff one.”  He gave Bucky a pointed look that Bucky chose to ignore.

Twenty-one.  Only a year different than Bucky.  Definitely not as young as he looks. The Pratt Institute shirt made more sense.  Bucky wondered what his major was, if he lived on campus, what he did in his free time... other than protecting the city from evil.  

He wanted to know everything there was to know about Steve Rogers.

The queen tapped Bucky on the shoulder with a long, pink fingernail a few minutes later, while Steve was thanking everyone for the birthday wishes. 

“Thanks,” she said, shaking Bucky’s hand. “For getting him here.”

“I figured since you threatened to wreck me, I’d better do it right.”  He nodded toward Steve in the clinic bed, surrounded by Bucky’s people and by his own.  Truth is, something about Steve Rogers had drawn Bucky in the minute he’d first seen him.  He didn’t need anyone to tell him to give Steve a hand.  It was just a thing that Bucky was going to do from here on out.  

And wasn’t  _ that  _ a helluva revelation.

Steve smiled over at Bucky.  Crooked grin, bandaged face, bruised knuckles, blue eyes shining with life… all of it added up to something that squirmed in Bucky’s gut like a warm mess of nerves.

“Stevie’s a good one.  Treat him good,” Ms. Size Eleven said, following Bucky’s gaze.

 

((☆))

 

“So, punk,” Steve smirked over at him when there was a lull in their rambling conversation.  

“Punk?  Who’s callin’ who punk?”

Steve grinned even more broadly.  The swelling in his lip was going down.  “You just hang out at Port Authority on the regular?  Looking for a good time?”

“Looks like I found one,” Bucky threw back, gesturing broadly at the clinic room but keeping his eyes on Steve.  “What were  _ you _ doing there?  Just giving yourself the birthday present of beating up a bully?”

“Hey, that's a  _ great  _ present,” Steve grinned.  “You should get yourself one.  Treat yourself.  But no, I was heading down to Washington.”

“What’s in Washington?  Girlfriend?” Bucky paused for fraction of a second and then added, “Boyfriend?”

“Neither.  Better.  The Smithsonian.  That was going to be my present to myself.”

“History nerd?”

“All around nerd,” Steve teased himself.  “Nah, I was going down for the Portrait Gallery.”  

He looked at Bucky for a long moment and then seemed to decide something.  He gestured toward the chair by the door.  

“Could you… It's my,” Steve cleared his throat.

Jim or Gabe or someone, maybe Ms. Size Eleven, had put a small book there before they left the impromptu birthday party.  It was a journal.  Bucky picked it up and handed it over.

Steve flipped open to a page with the nub of a pencil marking its spot.  He gave it to Bucky to look.  Filling the paper were sketches of everything and anything: trees, a fire hydrant, an old man walking with a cane, a motorcycle, a woman in a Monroe-style dress, the front facade of a bodega.  The fruit stand had faint hints of color, so did Marilyn’s lips.  

Bucky looked up at Steve for permission to turn the page.  Steve nodded.

The previous pair of pages was one huge, sweeping cityscape.  West out of Brooklyn Bridge Park, from the looks of it.  The page before that was full of angular, exploding images like a collage.  It was loud and random and  _ New York _ .  All of it had so much detail, so much  _ life _ .

“You drew all these?” Bucky asked.  

Steve nodded.  

Bucky tried to wrap his head around how all of this had sprung from the mind and fingers of this guy in front of him.  Deeply good and fiery and quiet and...

Out of nowhere, Bucky asked, “You feel up to putting me in here?”

Steve’s ears went a shade more red.  He sassed, “If you shut your yap for five minutes maybe I'd have a chance.”

 

((☆))

 

It was dark out.  The wall clock said it was almost midnight.  Time flies.

“Hey,” Bucky said, quietly interrupting Steve’s focus on his sketchbook.  “You think Jim’ll let you out of here tonight?”

“He’s not the boss of me,” Steve responded, barely looking up.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”  Bucky rolled his eyes.  “I wasn’t saying he was, but you got busted up good and I’m just thinking the doctor’s opinion matters.”

“I’m fine,” Steve said back.  He hadn't used the inhaler on the bedside table for the last couple of hours, so maybe he was.

“ _ You _ are a piece of work.”

Steve kept drawing, now grinning.  A few minutes later, though, curiosity got the better of him. “Why?”

Bucky thought about sassing him, didn’t.  “Thought we could go somewhere.”

“Such as?”

“It’ll be a surprise.”

Steve’s attention was full on Bucky now. He closed his sketchbook and swiveled his legs over the edge of the bed.  Toes dangling, he said, “I’m in.”

Before Steve even got his feet on the floor,  _ bang whizzzz! _

Outside, Dernier was whooping and yelling, “Americans have ze best traditions!” He lit off another round of fireworks.

The flashes of color lit up Steve's eyes.  He had the widest smile when he looked over at Bucky.

“Sharing a birthday with Lady Liberty ain’t half bad.”

 

((☆))

 

Steve was moving pretty good all things considered.  Jim had given him a couple of ibuprofen the size of dinner plates and told him to call him in the morning.  Seemed like the drugs had kicked in right about when they got off the N line.

“Nope, I’m gonna have to call this whole thing off,” Steve said as they walked up the stairs.  “You can’t take a guy from Brooklyn to Queens on a first date.”

“Hey, this guy,” Bucky said pointing at himself, “bleeds Brooklyn.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.  Sheepshead Bay, born and raised.”

Steve stopped on the top step and just stared at him, shaking his head.  He pointed at himself, like Bucky had a second ago, and said, “Marine Park.  Guess we’re neighbors.”

“ _ Really _ small world.”

“Yeah,” Steve replied, happy surprise written across his features.  “It really is.”

“And who says this is a date?”  Bucky grinned broadly at Steve, because he’d wanted this to be a date even if he hadn’t said so yet.

“After you rescue a guy from a beat down, least he can do is go on a date with you.  That makes  _ this _ a date.”

“If you say so, punk.”

By that point in the conversation they’d made it to where Bucky was taking them: Socrates Sculpture Park.  He bumped his shoulder against Steve’s gently.  

“Figured since you couldn’t make it to D.C. for the art, maybe this would make up for a it a little,” Bucky said quietly.  “Happy birthday an hour or two late.”

Steve mumbled that Bucky was a sap, and then took his hand and walked down the streetlighted path.

 

((☆))

 

The sky had turned from black to gray to yellow before they emerged out of the G line stop at Carroll Street.  The early morning clanks and creaks of the corner store’s roll-up shutters being opened, a car here and there, birds singing at the rising sun, all of it was music to Bucky.  

“This is me,” Steve said stopping outside a brick four-floor and jutting a thumb towards it.  

“I had a good time,” Bucky said at the same time Steve said, “You want to come up for a coffee or something?”

“Yeah, that’d be good,” he replied at the same time Steve grinned and said, “Yeah, me too.”

He ducked his head a little to hide the grin that made him feel out of his depth.  Steve looked up out of his own embarrassed smile and tugged Bucky forward up the steps.  

The little studio apartment was Steve-sized, and Bucky said so.  Steve snapped him with a dishtowel in retaliation.  

He looked around at the half-made bed and art supplies strewn on every surface.  There was a stack of books on the bedside table, half novels and half comics.  A vining plant wrapped around the bookshelf.  Morning light streamed in.

“It’s perfect,” Bucky said softly, and before he could stop himself, “like you.”

Steve stopped with a spoonful of coffee grounds halfway to the pot.  He looked surprised and hopeful for a blink of an eye, then his expression closed off suddenly.  “Shut up.  Don’t tease.”

“You shut up, because I’m not teasing you.”  Bucky stepped around the counter.  He made an uncertain move to take Steve’s hand again, and ended up just running a few fingers across the corded back of it, across Steve's raw knuckles before pulling away.  

At the park Steve only let go of Bucky's hand long enough to run his fingers along the curves of a statue, or later to continue his drawing of Bucky in the pool of light on a park bench.  Even then some part of them had been touching, arms, feet.  The darkness had been intimate.  It was so quiet for New York, like they'd been transported a thousand miles away to a place made just for them.  

Bucky'd tried to memorize the feel of Steve's hands.  The way he'd squeezed Bucky's fingers between his own in a nervously playful gesture.  The way his palm was warm and tacky with summer evening sweat.  There were callouses at the base of each of his fingers and another on the outer tip of his right pointer finger, maybe from gripping his pencil too tight.  Two of the knuckles on his left hand seemed too big, like they'd been broken before.  Half of 'em on his right hand had the skin roughed from today's fight.  His hands felt good in Bucky's.

Here in the kitchen, Steve let out a hard breath.  “Look, I’m not really into one night stands, so if that’s what you’re here for--”

“What?  Screw you, buddy.”  Bucky reeled.  That was about the last thing he expected to hear from Steve after their night together.  “I’m not nice enough -- or  _ stupid  _ enough -- to hang out in a hospital hoping for a fuck.”

“I don’t want or need a pity hook-up either.”

“What is this gigantic goddamn chip on your shoulder?” Bucky bickered back.

Steve looked at the ceiling, clearly struggling to find the words he wanted.  When he looked back at Bucky, his eyes had drained of the heat that had flared in them a few moments before.  “I’m fucking this up.  I’m just not… used to people, you know, coming up for coffee after doing romantic shit for me.”

“Romantic shit?  Real nice,” Bucky smiled.  He did lace his fingers with Steve’s this time, pulling him close.  Coffee grounds went everywhere.  Neither of them cared.

Steve turned his face upward and their lips brushed together.  The touch raced through Bucky’s blood.  He wanted  _ everything  _ from Steve Rogers here and now.  Or this one kiss could be enough, he could be satisfied by this touch until the end of time.  Bucky’d take him in all the ways, or in the simplest of ways.  The feel of Steve’s slender frame against him, he wanted to lay down with him on that bed and sleep for hours in the warm sun.  He wanted to peel every piece of clothing off him and make Steve beg for it.  Steve could push him to his knees and he’d blow him fast and hard right here on the linoleum.  

God, he was in so deep for this guy he barely even knew.  

Then Steve whispered, “Why are you too good to be true? There’s gotta be a catch.”

Guilt speared Bucky when he remembered there was.  He should have told Steve sooner, but he didn’t know things would be this way so fast.

“I’m in the Army,” Bucky admitted.  “I’m home on leave.”

Steve backed away, that closed-off expression sliding onto his features again.  His eyes had gone icy and gray.  It felt like a wound.

“Until when?”

_ Shit _ .  Bucky ran a hand through his out-of-regulation hair.    

“Tomorrow,” he admitted, flustered, like he’d been caught in a lie he hadn’t meant to tell.

“Tomorrow?  Jesus Christ.”  Steve turned away and gripped the counter. “My fucking luck.”

“That’s why I was at Port Authority.  I was picking up a bus schedule to get back to base.”  Bucky felt his voice crack and grab at the emotions roiling in his chest.

“So you’re leaving.  Tomorrow.”  Steve turned back around and glared at him.

“Yeah, yes.”  Bucky said quietly.  

It was a horrible confession and he wanted to explain that he hadn’t been hiding it.  He’d  _ forgotten _ .  But there was no way he could expect Steve to believe that.  Who forgets they’re shipping out?  Only someone who meets the person of their…

Bucky felt his face flush.   _ Shit.   _ Steve really was  _ it _ , wasn’t he?  Steve was the one.  Bucky’d been so caught up.  

“I didn’t--”  

He didn’t know how to finish that sentence, so they stood there in silence looking at each other.  Bucky hoped beyond hope that Steve would let him stay here, just for a little while longer.  He could barely think of anything else.  He  _ hadn’t _ thought of anything else other than Steve for the last 18 hours.  

Steve closed his eyes for a long time.  When he finally reopened them, he leveled a heated gaze on Bucky.  This time the heat wasn’t anger.

“We better make good use of our time.”

“Oh?” was all Bucky managed, hoarse and nervous.  For the first time in his life, it mattered if he fucked this up.  He wanted things to be right, and to last.  Plus, the power of Steve’s gaze knocked the breath out of him.  He couldn’t’ve said more if he’d wanted to.  

Steve laced a finger through Bucky’s belt loop. He was turning them toward the bed.  “Come here.”  

Bucky went willingly.  

Steve sat down on the edge of his bed.  He coaxed Bucky to stand between the spread of his thighs.  Electricity sparked when Steve first ran his hands up the outsides of Bucky’s legs, from knee to waist.  His touch was so frustratingly, temptingly gentle, like the way he'd caressed the sculptures as he studied them.  Denim separated skin from skin, but it was almost unbearable how much it turned Bucky on to have Steve here, hands stroking along the curve of his ass, mouth inches away from his groin.  

“I want to touch you,” Steve said.  He looked up at Bucky.  “Can I?” 

Bucky nodded.  “I want you to.”

Steve loosened Bucky’s belt.  He worked open the button and the zipper.  In that moment, he looked so  _ golden _ , sunlight glinting off him, blue eyes so bright, mouth so red.  Even the flaws were all Steve.  He owned his bruises and scrapes like badges of honor.  

Bucky felt like a better man for having Steve Rogers choose him.

Bucky leaned down suddenly.  He needed to try to tell Steve all of those things with a kiss.  Pressing his mouth to his was the only way he could think to say any of it. The sudden rush of feelings was too big to put into words.

Steve tugged on the waistband of Bucky’s underwear with a small, moaning grunt of pleasure.  They fell onto the bed together, tangled in half undone clothes. His tongue was as magical as the rest of him.  Every touch of it to Bucky’s lips, to his own tongue, to his hands,  _ anywhere  _ was like fireworks.  

Neither of them spoke more than a few gasped syllables of encouragement and praise.  Each graze of Steve’s hands over his clothes was enough to make him tremble with want.  His cock was full, and he couldn’t help rocking against Steve’s thigh.  Steve gave as good as he got.  Aching pleasure jolted through him when Steve’s hard cock pressed against his through their unzipped jeans.  Steve had his hands in Bucky’s hair, tugging and stroking and guiding his mouth to where he wanted it next -- lips, neck, collarbone.  Even without words Bucky knew when Steve was ready for him to pull off his shirt and to kiss the line of every rib that framed him -- sore, bruised ones included.  He knew when it was time to reach beneath Steve’s boxers and finally feel the firm length of him in his palm. He knew when to guide Steve’s hand to do the same.  The sound of Steve’s clear breaths, the warmth of them against his neck as they rutted together… it felt, God, so  _ huge _ a thing between them.

Steve shuddered against Bucky.  Through his orgasm, he gasped, “I love you, Buck.”

Tears welled in Bucky’s eyes as pleasure flooded through him.  “I love you, too.  So much.”

 

((☆))

 

Steve came back to Bucky’s house later.  He sat on the edge of Bucky’s bed and watched him pack his duffel.  He quietly led Bucky down the hall to the bathroom, sat him on the tub lip, and shaved his hair close with the clippers. (“Why do you gotta be so handsome?” he’d asked with this  _ look  _ flashing in his blue eyes that made Bucky feel like he was soaring, and then they’d done it again in the shower until it ran cold.)  They ate together on the couch, flipping through channels randomly.  

Tomorrow was too damn close, and today was too damn short.

The front door opened and closed.  “I’m home.  Anyone here?”

Timmy came down the hall and poked his head in, taking in the scene.  “You two don’t waste any time.”  He plopped down in his La-Z-Boy and threw up the footrest.  “Got any more of that spaghetti?”

 

((☆))

 

“We have horrible timing,” Steve said.  His forehead was pressed against Bucky’s.  The hot stink of Port Authority surrounded them.  Bucky’s duffel was at their feet.

“We do,” Bucky agreed.  “I’m glad though.”

“More than glad.”  Steve looked at Bucky and his eyes were shining.

“It’s not forever.  I’ll be back.”

“Not soon enough,” Steve whispered.  

A lump tightened in Bucky’s throat.  “Yeah, well, you keep New York safe.  I’ll work on the rest of the world.”

Steve sobbed and laughed at the same time.  He nodded.  “Okay.”  

Bucky kissed him softly.  Steve kissed him right back.  He loved him.  He’d wait.

The bus’ air brakes hissed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Bucky and (some of the minor) Howlies go to war. Not all make it back. Bucky is injured and held captive; brief mentions of torture.

Bucky unpacked his things into his footlocker.  They were only going to be stateside for 10 days before deploying, but this was home for now, however temporary.  Routine was good.  Guys were tossing a football back and forth down the aisle between the bunks.  Happy Sam was quietly unpacking his own duffel into the upper bunk, a stony expression on his face like always. Pinky, back again on loan from the Brits, had a fuckin’ camp stove set up to make tea.  It was good.  Guys were pumped to be back together.  

But Bucky felt torn this time.  Half of him was back in New York.  

Under his socks was a folded paper with one ragged edge.  

Bucky’s heart leapt into his throat.  He unfolded it.  It was Steve’s drawing, ripped from his sketchbook.  In it, Bucky was gazing toward the viewer.  The expression on this other Bucky’s face made him flush.  Steve had captured all of those things they’d felt during their day together, their one perfect day, and he’d put it here, pencil on paper.  

On the back, Steve had written, “ _ Waiting, - S.R. _ ” 

Bucky tucked its corners under the springs of Happy Sam’s mattress above his lower bunk.  Fuck any guy who came over here and gave him shit for looking at his own face all night, because that wasn’t even close to what Bucky saw in Steve’s gift to him.

 

((☆))

 

“Fucking secondhand humvee,” Junior griped from the driver’s seat, because that's what you do for small talk during war.  If you ain’t complaining, you’re dead.  “It’s gonna rattle apart before we get there.”

“It’s not the humvee,” Bucky razzed, another way to stay within the ROE during wartime.  The more shit talk the better.  He stayed alert out his window for signs of enemy presence even while he returned the chatter.  He had his M4 resting on the sill.  “It’s that you  _ still _ only have your driver’s permit.  Ain’t even old enough to have a license.”

Junior Juniper was the youngest guy in their platoon by at least two years.  Bucky didn’t think he even had to shave.  Reminded him of Steve like that.  

“Shut the fuck up, old man,” Junior retorted.  He purposely went through a pothole just to spite him.  

Bucky grinned out the window. That reminded him of Steve too.

The radio crackled.

“They’re in the trees,” Bucky whispered suddenly.

 

((☆))

 

“Christ, shitshitshit,” Junior swore.  

He was leaning over Bucky.  Everything was dusty and dark brown.  Acrid smoke was everywhere.  

For a second, Bucky didn’t understand why Junior was crouching over him, why the world was tilted on its side. Then it was rushing back to him in a flash.  The explosion.  Probably an IED.  Parts of the humvee flying everywhere, blown to shit.  

_ Pain _ .

Junior yanked a tourniquet out of his flak jacket pocket and tied it around Bucky’s bicep.  “You’re gonna be fine, old man.  We’ll get you fixed up.  No problem.  Just hang in--”

The life went suddenly out of Junior’s eyes, even before the pop of the handgun registered in Bucky’s ears.

 

((☆))

 

They fixed him up, like Junior said.  Only it wasn’t Americans that did it.  

When Bucky came to, he reached for his chest pocket, desperate to touch Steve’s drawing.  He’d been carrying it there, safe and next to his heart.  He needed to feel something solid, something good.

But his shirt was gone.

His arm was gone.  

 

((☆))

 

He didn’t know what they wanted him to know.  That didn’t mean they didn’t try to get it out of him anyway.  Didn’t help that Bucky’s sass came out when they put the literal screws to him.  

“That all you got?”  

Not the smartest thing to ask when you’ve got zero leverage, but Brooklyn died hard.  

He kept a grip on his memory of Steve here in the darkness.  Tracing the lines of him to keep them vivid, like morning sun.  He imagined Steve busting in here and giving the interrogator a piece of his mind about fairness and the American way while he had him in a headlock.  

When the thirst got bad enough, when biting the sides of his tongue wouldn’t bring any more saliva, he remembered Steve’s laugh and the touch of his hand in Bucky’s.

 

((☆))

 

Weeks.  

No, longer... months, maybe.  Hard to tell.  Lost count in the dark.  

Memory of those blue eyes faded.  The exact shade… can’t… can’t quite...  

Dirt floor is the same pitch black as the clay walls, same as the ceiling.  Air in the room is blackness.  Pacing back, forth, back, forth.  A neverending monotony that’s seventeen wide, nine long.  

Seventeen.  

Nine.  

Try to remember.  Have to remember him.  

Steve.  

Every fleck of those blue irises.  He had to hold on to...

Loved him so suddenly.  So fiercely.  

Couldn’t remember the shade of those eyes.

His arm ached even though it wasn’t there.

 

((☆))

 

_ BOOM _

A concussion grenade knocked him on his ass in the dirt, left his ears ringing louder than anything he’d ever heard.  

The Ranger team’s gun-mounted lights were like dawn... fireworks… streetlamps.  The ringing in his ears was church bells.  

“‘Bout time,” Bucky rasped.  “You fight every person in the five boroughs before you came, or what?”

He reached out for his memory of Steve with his left hand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Bucky deals with PTSD, attends a therapy/support group.

“Hey, kid.”  

Uncle Timmy leaned in close when Bucky finally woke up.  He spoke gently and his moustache was turned up in a small grin, but the tightness of stress and worry was obvious in his eyes.

Timmy was leaning too close, way too close, but Bucky didn’t flinch.    

The last 72 hours were a haze of triage, debriefing, transport, and emptiness.  All he wanted was for this hospital bed to absorb him.  A nothingness of clean safety.

“Welcome back to the U.S. of A.  How’re you doing?”

The one-sided conversation went by in a blur.  Lots of stuff to catch up on, Timmy said.  Dernier got into it with an idiot Uber driver.  Jim’s clinic got a grant.  Old Ms. Carter’s cat ran up the front tree, and she climbed right up after it, the old bat.  Didn’t even wait for a ladder, sayin’ “the job’s got to be done, and I’m not waiting for any of you men to do it.”  

Everyone was worried... wanted to see him... call... come home soon.  

It was too big to think about.  

Uncle Timmy cleared his throat, nothing left to update him on.  He laid a rubber-banded stack of letters on the table next to Bucky’s hospital bed.  The left side.  He tapped them with a finger.  

“From your guy.”  

Bucky didn’t flinch.  He looked blankly from the letters to Timmy, and didn’t let himself look back.

Timmy nodded once, sorta pained, before he left, touching the brim of his bowler in salute.

Bucky rolled over and tried to sleep.  

 

((☆))

 

He counted to four before the anesthetic drip pulled him under into darkness.  

He woke up later, groggy, with a newly bandaged stump. A drain tube emerged from under the gauze and went to a bag.  Seeing stuff from the inside be on the outside wasn’t one of Bucky’s favorite pastimes, so he tried not to look.

“Sergeant Barnes?  I’m going help you to sit up,” a woman’s voice said loudly to pierce the lingering haze of anesthesia.  “The procedure went well.  No unexpected issues.  Can you shrug your shoulders for me?”  It was Dr. Hill.  She was no-nonsense. Bucky liked her.  Her hands were firm on his arm, his neck, his stump.  

Bucky’s eyelids were heavy.  He was feeling no pain, as they say.  This surgery had been his choice.  Worth it, he thought before the morphine lulled him back to sleep, if he could hold Steve’s hand again.  To feel his hands on his arm, his neck, his…

Some day, maybe, he could have that.  Until then, _ waiting. _

 

((☆))

 

“No.”  

Bucky rolled over and put his back to the gray-haired nurse.  The ache was distant.  Mostly he felt echoingly empty.  There was nothing inside of him that was good.     


“Are you sure, son?  He said he came all the way down on the Greyhound.”  

Bucky didn’t respond.  He was too broken.  He couldn’t bear to have Steve see him like this.  Steve shouldn’t have to carry this burden too.  It was too fucked up.  Bucky was too fucked up.  

Later, she came back and quietly laid a brochure from the Portrait Gallery on the bedside table.  Moustaches were drawn on all of the paintings.

 

((☆))

 

“Sam Wilson.”  The man held out his hand and shook Bucky’s in greeting.  “Cup of coffee on your way in?”

Bucky grunted.  He forced himself to nod.  People would expect him to nod, to have the coffee.  

This place was too bright.  His empty sleeve felt spotlighted.

There was a circle of them.  Strangers all sitting in a circle, chatting and smiling.  Bucky could see their teeth when they laughed.  One of them had crutches next to her.  Dark sunglasses on another.  None of the empty chairs were good.  Too many windows.  No strategic advantage.  No defensive position.  Everywhere was too bright.  

Sam held out a cup of coffee.  Bucky left without taking it.  

 

((☆))

 

Lights off, curtain closed, blanket pulled to his chin.  He curled in on himself, his stump stabbing pain into his shoulder.  He faced the door.  Heartbeat jackrabbiting.  

No one was there.  No enemies.  Finally dark enough.  

His body started slowly to unclench.  He watched shadows of the nurses’ familiar footsteps pass the gap at the base of his door.

After a while, he reached out with his right hand and touched the stack of envelopes.  Steve had touched these.

He pulled his hand back under the covers when the panic threatened to take him again.  

Steve deserved more than half a man.

 

((☆))

 

“Call for you from Mr. Steve Rogers,” the switchboard lady said.  

Bucky’s lungs constricted.  “I-- I can’t.  Don’t--”  

Tears stung and blurred his vision.  He ripped the phone from the wall and threw it in the corner.  

When his nurse found him, he was curled in the shower stall with his blanket wrapped over him.  She replaced the blood-dotted gauze around his stump after mending his ruptured sutures.

“I’m not enough,” he whispered to her.

“I haven’t got the foggiest what you’re talkin’ about, but I can tell you that you’re plenty enough of a man to get through this and see the other side.  And I’m here to help you.”  She smiled kindly at him, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deep.  The golden chain that hung from the bows of her glasses glinted in the harsh light.  “Or, I’ll kick your tuchus if that’s what it takes.”  She winked.  It reminded him of Old Ms. Carter from back home.  

 

((☆))

 

“Here to give it another try?”  Sam smiled and gave him a fresh cup of coffee.

Dr. Hill had insisted he try again.  Something about healing the physical body and the mind too.  

“Sounds like bullshit,” he’d said.  But he knew she was probably right.  He was a shell that used to be a man.  New York might as well’ve been the moon for how far away it seemed.  He couldn’t go back until he was… more, better.  Until he deserved to.  He didn’t know if he could ever go back.  How would he get that far?    

But this time he took Sam’s coffee.  The woman with the crutches moved seats with a small, knowing smile, giving Bucky the one closest to the corner and facing the door.  He sat in the circle and watched them from behind his too-long hair.  

He was glad Sam didn’t mention him, didn’t make him introduce himself.  

 

((☆))

 

“Mail call,” the orderly said.  

He brought in two envelopes.  Bucky added them to the stack, tucking them carefully under the rubber band.  Steve had touched these.

Bucky still couldn’t remember the color of Steve’s eyes.  He knew they were blue, but he couldn’t remember the shape, or how his eyelashes were.  

He could remember the look on his own face in Steve’s drawing, though.  And he could remember Steve’s scrawled message.   _ Waiting _ .

How long, he wondered.

 

((☆))

 

“I’m--”  He had to clear his throat and take a sip of juice.  It was juice this time instead of coffee.  Juice from powder, like Kool-Aid that would stain his mouth red.  Flitting thoughts of things that could happen if he wished hard enough -- Coney Island and summer and Steve, being whole -- passed through his mind and were gone.  “I’m Bucky.  Barnes.  Bucky Barnes.  Part of him anyway,” he said, shrugging his left shoulder.

The rest of the circle smiled and chuckled.

“Hi, Bucky,” they all said together.

Ok.  

Later that night he put the stack of letters under his pillow.  It made a lump, but he slept better than he had since… since before.

 

((☆))

 

Another letter came.  He added it unopened to the stack, but not before trying to memorize the tilt and rapidity of Steve’s writing on the envelope.   

 

((☆))

 

“I lost something,” Bucky shared.  

It was week 8 of coming here.  Week 8 of drinking bad coffee, of having a stale cookie.  Week 8 of remembering how to be around people, emerging out of the darkness a little bit at a time.

“A part of me got left behind back there,” he continued.  He was talking about his arm, and he wasn’t.  “It was an IED.”  

Heads nodded around the room.  They’d told their stories: IEDs, snipers, suicide bombers, friendly fire.  None of them were good stories.

“Blew up our squad.  I was the only survivor.”  Bucky steeled himself to tell them.  He compartmentalized, telling his foggy memories of how it went down like he’d watched them in a movie.  “Other guys made it through the IED, but they came through and picked ‘em off one by one.”

He wasn’t ready to share about how the one with the baby face had died while saving him.

 

((☆))

 

He didn’t open it, but he picked out one of the envelopes and started carrying it in his shirt pocket.   Everyday, like he had with the drawing.  Steve’s hand over his heart.  A pledge to himself, or to Steve, or  _ from  _ Steve.  It still ached too much to go to that part of himself except to brush the surface of his memories.

And the stack of letters kept steadily growing.  

 

((☆))

 

Sam had a way, this thing about him, that made people want to share their stories.  It's not that he was some kind of saint, because he wasn't.  Sometimes he was a giant dick, Bucky was coming to find out. 

“I run the monuments in the mornings.  Want to join up?  If you think you can keep up, that is,” Sam goaded him during Week 12.

And so Bucky did.  The daily physio at Walter Reed had helped him regain some of the muscle mass he’d lost.  His balance was still off, but his body was learning.  Group was helping him deal with open air, strangers, positions without vantage.  He could give Sam’s jog a try.

Only it wasn’t a jog, it was a  _ sprint _ .  A sprint through cold, late-winter drizzle.

“You are a fuckin’ sadist,” Bucky panted, leaning over the Reflecting Pond and feeling like he might lose his breakfast.

Sam laughed.  “PJ School got me this way.  I’m on or I’m off, not much in between.”

“Fuckin’ Air Force,” Bucky said, still hunched over, gripping the stitch in his right side.  

They looked at each other and laughed.  It was the first laugh Bucky’d had since… before.

 

((☆))

 

Routine helped.  

Get up. Run. Group. Physio. Sleep. Repeat.

Week 20 was when Sam found him a place in a halfway house.  Bucky moved out of his hospital room with one bag of clothes and his ever-growing stack of letters in a shoebox that his nurse had scrounged up.  The next two letters showed up on the day he moved in.  Bucky added them carefully to the second rubberbanded stack, ordered by postmark.  Then he patted the one in his pocket to make sure it was still waiting there.

“Want to talk about those?”  

Bucky whipped around and stared at Sam leaning against the doorway to his new room.  He was shaking his head before he even realized he was saying no.  

“Not yet.”

Sam stared him down.  Bucky thought about getting under his blankets to avoid him.

“Do you know the Pararescue motto?” Sam asked him finally.

Bucky shook his head again.

“ _ These Things We Do, That Others May Live _ .  After I lost Riley, my right hand man,” he said pointedly, “it took me a long time to come to terms with that.”

Bucky spent a long night staring at his new ceiling trying to figure what that might mean for him.

 

((☆))

 

He opened the pocket letter on the day they fitted him for his first prosthetic.  He used the new arm to hold the envelope still while he slid his right finger under the flap.

Steve had licked it shut, probably.  His tongue, his lips… they’d been right here.  Bucky ran his right thumb along the line of dried glue.  Then his left, but it pushed the envelope off the table.  

He didn’t take the paper out.  Not yet.  

 

((☆))

 

“Hi, I’m Bucky Barnes, and I lost something.  Last week I guess I started getting it back.  Or, well,” Bucky floundered for how to say the rest of the stuff that was swirling around in his head.  There was so much in there that he wanted to get out, to give to these people -- some strangers, some old-timers, all of them friendly faces.

“They fitted me with this.”  He raised his left arm and flexed the flesh-colored hand.  It was built of metal underneath a coating that almost felt warm. “Prototype.”

A soft chorus of  _ cool _ and  _ shit dude _ and  _ nice _ spun around the circle.  

“Yeah, pretty awesome.  I can do this now when Sam makes me puke during our morning runs.”  He concentrated and made his new hand flick Sam off.

Everyone laughed, including Bucky.

He pulled the letter out of the envelope that night.  Steve would’ve laughed too, so it seemed like time.

Not for reading it yet, but for touching it, for getting closer.  He held it up to his nose and then let it trail against his lips.  

That night, the desk clerk slid another envelope under Bucky’s door.  Bucky smiled when he saw it there in the morning sun.

 

((☆))

 

“Sometimes I worry he was just a dream,” Bucky said almost inaudibly.

Sam took a drink of his beer.  Didn’t react much, but Bucky could tell he’d heard him.

“I know he’s real,” he tapped his pocket where the folded paper lived, gesturing at it and assuring himself that it was still there, safe, “but… I don’t fucking know, I can’t remember him enough.”

Sam nodded toward the hidden letter, gestured with the neck of his bottle.  “You have a way to fix that.”

“What if he stopped waiting?”

Sam snorted.  “Who in their right mind would write a hundred letters to a guy they don’t want anything to do with?”  His expression went from friendly exasperation to serious.  “Look, Barnes, it’s time  _ you _ stopped waiting.”

He was right.  

It was past time.  Waiting had become habit more than anything.  Reflexive, a way to protect himself.  A continuous flinch.  

Bucky reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter.  His left arm was getting more useful, and he slid the fingers of it up the paper to unfold it.  

“I’m gonna hit the head,” Sam said, leaving Bucky with a private moment in the otherwise crowded pub.

Bucky didn’t know what he’d expected to find.  A letter, he guessed.  So the drawing caught him by surprise.  It shouldn’t have, but it did.  It was of Port Authority of all places.  Bucky angled it toward the dim wall sconce to see it better in the low light.  People crowded the main concourse, pulling bags, looking up at the display monitors, busying through life like only New Yorkers could.  

Two figures were buried in the crowd, obscured by those in the foreground.  One taller, one shorter.  As they walked toward the Westbound departures, only the backs of their heads were visible… and their linked hands.

He had signed it the same way as the other had been.   _ Waiting, - S.R. _

Tears prickled in Bucky’s eyes.  His left hand crumpled the paper when it spasmodically clenched.  

“So?” Sam asked, back from the john.

“I gotta--”  Bucky was already pushing through the crowd.

When he shoved out of the pub’s front door and spilled onto the sidewalk, he started sprinting.  He couldn’t get to that shoebox fast enough.

 

((☆))

 

Bucky sat on the bed in the near-dark and stared at the shoebox.  He was still heaving inhales from his run back here, and his heartbeat was deafening.  The metallic tang of exertion pricked the back of his tongue. 

It occurred to him suddenly, maybe Sam’d been training him up with wind sprints for this exact moment.

Bucky let out a sound halfway between a bark of laughter and a sob.  Leave it to Sam Wilson to swoop in and save the day like he had some kind of 40,000 foot view of Bucky’s psyche.  Bucky threw a middle finger salute toward the window and the night sky beyond it just for Sam.

His short-lived laughter died.  Here he was, at the brink, still just staring at the box.  Inside his chest, his heart felt like it was going to rip in two.  Risk had outweighed uncertain reward for so many months.  If the letters in here were angry or, worse, if they held less and less affection as the postmarks were more recent… he couldn’t unknow that.  He was living in a no man’s land.  It was safe here, not knowing one way or the other.  No agony from finding the worst case scenario, but no relief and no warmth.  No  _ Steve _ .  Bucky’s heart was begging to have that one perfect day back, any tiny of shred of it, but the box was silent here in this limbo.  

There was Bucky  _ before _ , and there were the pieces of Bucky leftover  _ after _ .  Two halves of his life, and he didn’t know how Steve fit into it now.  He didn't know what Steve had filled those letters with.  The box’s silence was telling him nothing.

Waiting in the dark was what Bucky was getting best at.  The last year of trauma, uncertainty, fear, and hiding had trained him up to be this way.  He survived, unsettled, in this perpetual liminal space.

He reached over with his left hand and flipped on the bedside lamp.  Warm, soft light spilled onto the bed.  The shoebox wasn’t deep gray anymore.  It was red and blue.  The blanket was no longer a mass of darkness.  Its tufts of yarn were one color chasing the next.

Bucky could patch the parts of himself back together.  Hell, he was already  _ doing _ that.  In his bones he knew that things would be different.  The old Bucky was gone.  He’d changed when he went to war.  He changed when he fell in love with Steve, too. There was no rewinding time back to that day they spent together, but that didn’t mean the new Bucky was doomed to loneliness.  Love was the thing that was going to see him out of this.  He could let himself hope  _ that _ was what he was going to find inside the letters.  

_ Steve’s in here waiting.  He’s been waiting this whole time for me to love myself enough... _

And, at that thought, Bucky took a deep breath.  

He tipped the lid open on the box of letters.  

A lifetime ago, he unpacked that first pocket picture from under his socks. It had captured everything that Bucky was then, everything Steve saw in him.  He’d memorized every detail of it hanging from the underside of Happy Sam’s bunk.  Then that picture was gone.  The second pocket picture he carried against his heart until tonight gave him terrifying hope.  He and Steve could have a future.  They could have something good and real.  Steve was dreaming of places they could go together.  He was making plans that included Bucky.  Fantasies of the two of them together were ok.  They were allowed.  Steve had drawn his permission.

Bucky’s right hand trembled as he reached into the box and pulled out the first bundle of envelopes.  His left hand tugged at the rubber band so abruptly that it snapped and flew into the shadows.

The oldest postmark, he was gonna start with that one.  His whole body shook as he slid the paper out.  His left hand was the only steady thing on him as it unfolded the letter.  Another drawing, this time of them curled together on Timmy's couch. Bucky drank in the lines of Steve’s body next to his, tucked together with the TV bright in the darkness.  The back was signed  _ Waiting _ .  

The next letter was a drawing too.  Bucky gazed at the artist over his cup of coffee in this one.  Steve had drawn so much love (and maybe smiling mischief) in Bucky's eyes.  It had bright, morning hues that said they were waking up together.   _ Waiting _ was written on the back.

Bucky tore into the next envelope.  Central Park.   _ Waiting.   _

And the next, somewhere on the L train, fingers laced together.   _ Waiting. _

And in the next, Steve looking down at him as he straddled his lap.  The raw intimacy in the sketch took Bucky’s breath away.

_ Waiting _ , all of them signed the same.

 

((☆))

 

Sam found him in the morning, asleep in a pile of opened letters.  The one in his fist was a self-portrait with Steve reaching forward towards the viewer -- toward Bucky -- the word  _ waiting _ drifting up from his parted lips like in a comic book.  It was the last letter, the one Steve sent a week ago. It was the first one that said that all-important word on the front side.  Bucky heard it in Steve's voice when he read it.  He was still waiting for him.  For  _ him _ .  

Bucky’d cried himself to sleep amid pictures of he and Steve everywhere and nowhere.  Together in all of them.  It was overwhelmingly good and terrifying.  

Sam had a warm, solid grip on his shoulder and put a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.   “C’mon, grunt.  Up and at 'em.”

Bucky hoped he hadn’t waited too long.  The knot of emotion in his chest felt like it was suffocating him.  

Sam read it right off his face.

“Listen, you gotta be brave about this.  Even if it’s an act.  Fake it ‘til you make it.  No one -- not even your hero boy -- is gonna know the difference.”

 

((☆))

 

“I’ve been hiding,” Bucky told the group that afternoon by way of a goodbye.  He pushed his hair behind his ear.  “I shut away some things inside myself to hide them from…”

He looked around the circle and every eye was on him.  They understood.

“I was trying to protect them… him,  _ us  _ from everything horrible that happened.  I wanted to keep the memory of that one golden day.”  He took a deep breath.  “I am an idiot.”

“Hear, hear,” Sam interjected.

Bucky flipped him the bird.  “Yeah, yeah.  I’m an idiot, because I… we don’t have to wait anymore.  I’m ready to try to have a whole life, not half of one.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None.  
> Note: Here is the amazing art!

Timmy went 15 miles an hour over the speed limit the whole way up the I-95.  Bucky was grateful.  Now that he’d decided to come home, he was itching to be there pronto.  

“Take my bag home, would ya?”

Timmy pulled up in front of Steve’s apartment.  Bucky got out on the curb and leaned back in on the passenger side windowsill.  

“Christ, I come and get you.  I drive you up here, no charge.  And now you want me to be your damn butler?”  

If you weren’t complaining, if you weren’t teasing a guy, you were dead.

Timmy grinned across the passenger seat at him.  “No problem, kid.  Be good.  That boy’s been missing you bad.  Hell if I know why, but--”

“Shaddup,” Bucky grinned back, concealing the fact that his chest was fluttering with everything he wanted to say to Steve.  He was going to explode into a thousand incandescent shards.

“Wait,” he called out before Timmy put the cab back in gear.  Bucky reached back into his bag and grabbed the shoebox.  He slapped the roof of the car to say goodbye before he turned to the front steps.

Steve’s buzzer rang faintly through the second story window that was cracked open a hair.  Bucky waited a few seconds and pushed it again.  Then again, insistently.  He was going to vibrate out of his skin.  

The first floor neighbor lady opened her window and leaned out.  

“He’s not here, ya know.”  She looked him over, chewing her gum double-quick.  “You that guy from the sketchbook?  You look like that guy from Steve’s sketchbook.  You is, isn’t you?  Yeah, you are.  Damn that boy can draw good.  Mm mm, yes he can.  And you look just as good in person as you done in those drawings.  He left ‘bout an hour ago with those drag girls.  Went over to the parade all glammed up, looking like he was trying to reach Jesus in those heels they put him in.  Wobbling all over the place like some kinda baby animal wearing lip gloss.  Did make his butt look fine, if you know what I mean.  All high and pert and mm mm, yes ma’am.  Like a little peach you just gotta bite, you know?  They had to drag his sorry ass out of bed, though.  Been in there depressed as shit for weeks.  That because of you?  Huh?  What you gotta say for yourself, sketchbook boy?  You better go make it right, cuz ain’t no one fucking over Steve Rogers and gettin’ away with it ‘round here.”

Bucky felt like he was in a strong wind trying to process all of what she was rapid-fire saying.  

“Where…?” was all he managed to ask in response.

 

((☆))

 

He had no idea how he was going to find Steve in the crowd of half-dressed, sequined, leathered, rubber, chaps-wearing, rainbow-draped people.  He felt swallowed by the press of them, the blur of movement.  Panic tried to force itself to the surface when people bumped into him jostling the shoebox.  

The sea of smiling faces -- everyone seemed so happy, and that did help settle his nerves -- nudged him forward like the flow of a river.  Bucky was spit out by the crowd at the edge of the parade route.  An all-lesbian marching band was going by playing “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” while their cheerleaders threw dental dams and condoms at the crowd.  One of the condoms landed on Bucky’s shoebox and he put it in his pocket in a trembling surge of optimism.  

He scanned the sides of the street trying desperately to spot that head of blond hair.  But, what if he’d gotten a haircut?  What if he had on a hat?  

A glint of blue made him think of Steve’s eyes.  He’d spend hours rememorizing the exact shade if he could just find him.

Two dozen Harleys driven by black-clad men rumbled by, waving at the crowd and tossing flower petals.  The last bike had a bearded bride riding backwards astride another man’s lap, his arms around him to the handlebars and his chin over his shoulder to see the path ahead.  It was ridiculous and joyous and risky.  

The jockstrapped kid next to him caught the bouquet that came whipping toward him when Bucky flinched away from the sudden movement.      

“Hey, there,” the kid said.  “You ok?”

“Fine.  Trying to find someone.”

He looked Bucky over and sidled up closer.  “I can be your someone,” he purred too close to Bucky’s lips.

“Thanks, but--”  Bucky stepped back.

“Aw, my loss, baby.  Hope you find him,” and he looked him over again, “lucky son of a bitch, damn.”  He tapped Bucky’s chest with the bouquet and hissed, “I hope ya’ boy ride that til you cross-eyed.”  Then he was on to the next man in the crowd and the next, flirting his way down the line.

Bucky felt overwhelmed by the sunny happiness and freedom that bubbled through the people here.  It was impossible to stand still.  If he stopped moving, he’d jiggle apart into a pile of nerves and fake arms.  He pushed upstream.  The shoebox burned in his grip.  The pictures inside it were Steve Rogers’ heart.  Bucky had to bring them back to the man who owned his.

Further down the line of floats and marchers was a simple white banner.  As it and Bucky converged on each other, he could just make out _107th_ .  His gut jumped into his throat.   _107th Street._ He broke into a jog.   _107th Street Clinic._

Behind the banner was a ratty old checker cab, Gabe in the driver’s seat. The car had been fitted with a hitch and it was pulling a float.  Drag queen nurses and drag king doctors strutted on the flatbed.  Dead center was a gurney.  On it was the blond head of hair, the slim frame, the blue eyes that Bucky had come here for.  

Fifty yards separated them.  Bucky froze in the middle of the street.  His heart took over from his head.  Nervousness was drowned out by the first look at Steve in living color.  

 _Hero_ was printed on Steve’s red, white, and blue pageant sash.  Towering red platform heels dangled off his feet.  The auburn-haired queen was wrapping a bandage around his head…  

Steve grabbed her wrist suddenly, holding her still.  He locked eyes with Bucky down the block.  

Time stopped.  Balloons floated past in slow motion.  There was no sound except the thundering thump of Bucky’s full heart.

It mattered if he fucked this up.   _Please_ , he thought, _forgive me for almost fucking this up._

Steve toed off the high heels, shrugged off the banner, and then he was sprinting barefoot toward Bucky.  Bandages unraveled from his head, leaving a streamer of gauze trailing behind him on the street.

“Steve,” Bucky whispered, and then he was running too.  

They collided at 9th and Prospect Park, mid-parade and to the sound of a thousand cheers.  The shoebox smashed between them before Bucky lost his grip on it, spilling the drawings into the soft breeze that swirled across the park.  For the moment he didn’t care because Steve was in his arms again, saying his name over and over.  His fingers danced over Bucky’s face.

“I missed you,” Bucky choked out.  It was so much, this feeling that filled him.   _Steve_ , in his arms, he lifted him and spun them in a circle in the middle of the street.

“Put me down, you asshole,” Steve smiled blindingly.  “I waited, I woulda waited forever.  Buck, let me kiss you.”

(And _that_ was how their picture landed on the front page of _Get Out_ ’s next issue.

Not that a picture could really capture the feeling of soaring and drowning that Bucky had in that moment.)  

“Get in,” Gabe yelled at them when the cab rolled up to their position.  “Get the hell in here.” He laid on the horn while he was yelling.

(And _that_ was how Bucky ended up making out with a guy _in_ the Pride parade.  

Gabe took a picture when they weren’t looking -- because hell if either of them were taking a break to pose for a snapshot -- and sent it to everyone they knew.)  

“I’d appreciate it if y’all remember I’m driving up here.  Keep your clothes on, is what I’m saying.”

 

((☆))

 

Gabe didn't even stop at the end of the parade route. He drove the entire float -- cab, flatbed, drag queens, and the two of them tangled in the backseat -- over to Steve's apartment.

“Next time I’m tying tin cans to the bumper and dumping some rice on you.  Get out and say hello to each other in private. Cripes,” Gabe scolded them affectionately.

“Thanks.  Owe you one,” Steve mumbled against Bucky's lips.  He was half on top of Bucky, pressing him against the door.  Seat belts be damned.

Bucky was just as unwilling to pull away. He couldn’t stop touching Steve now that he started.  Some distant part of his brain was telling him, however, that this would be better in a bed than in a back seat.  He fumbled behind himself for the door handle, returning Steve’s kisses while he tried to find it.  

“ _Mmph_ , gotta-- Steve, I gotta-- Steve!  I gotta get the door with my good hand,” Bucky said.

Neither of them had acknowledged the elephant in the cab until now.  Steve stopped kissing him long enough to search Bucky’s eyes for… something.  Bucky wasn’t sure what, but Steve took Bucky's left hand and slowly brought it to his lips.

“This hand?” he asked, gazing up at Bucky with intensity burning in his eyes.  Steve placed a kiss on the tip of Bucky’s pointer finger.  He moved to his middle finger and did the same.  Then his ring finger, and his pinky.  “Seems like a good hand,” Steve murmured.

“For cryin’ out loud,” Gabe grumbled loudly.  

A second later, Bucky had to catch himself from falling out on the curb when Gabe yanked the door open.  

“Take it inside.”

Bucky stepped out of the car a little sheepishly, but Steve leapt out and back into Bucky’s embrace.  

“Still here with my size 11’s.”  The comment -- it was a threat -- came from the float.  Steve’s friends were leveling him with looks that were a mix of excitement and disapproval.

“Looks like you found him,” the neighbor lady called out from her window.  “No more moping, Stevie.”

“No more moping,” Steve agreed, threading his fingers through Bucky's left hand and drawing him up the front stairs.  “And no more waiting.”

At least a half a dozen condoms pelted them.  Bucky didn’t miss it when Steve grabbed one and shoved it in his pants pocket.

Bucky was glad they were inside, away from witnesses, when the weight of Steve's words registered.   _No more waiting._

“Thanks… for waiting. And sorry,” Bucky said with a thick voice.

Steve halted on the stairs.  He turned back to Bucky and put his arms around Bucky’s neck. He was taller this way.  Even barefoot, he was taller than Bucky.  Baby blues gazed down at him.

“When you're ready to tell the story, I want to know everything.” He laid a gentle kiss on Bucky's forehead. “But for now I’m happy to just say welcome home.  With my mouth.  On various parts of your body.”

A jumble of feelings ambushed Bucky.  A surge of lust he hadn’t experienced in a year, a wave of relief.  He hadn’t thought about it outright until now, but deep down he’d been worried that Steve would be disgusted by him.  He was worried that Steve’d touch his new arm once and bow out.  But here Steve was with lust --  and now concern, since Bucky was tearing up -- written all over his face.  Bucky’s relief and gratitude had nowhere to go but up and out his eyes.

“I’m good, I’m good,” Bucky said, wiping at his cheeks with the back of his hand.  

Steve thumbed away the rest of the moisture.  “Come on.  We’ll take it slow as you want.  I’m just saying,” he smirked and licked his bottom lip, “my mouth is ready whenever you’re ready.”

Bucky snorted.  Steve was too much.  

Inside his apartment, Steve led him to the bed.  He straddled Bucky’s lap.  He fingered Bucky’s dogtags in a moment of contemplation that seemed to slow his urgent need to be horizontal.

“I wasn’t sure you still wanted me,” Steve confessed.  “Maybe I was coming on too strong with all the letters.”

Bucky’s heart jolted.  “The letters!  I brought ‘em back with me.  Shit!  I dropped them at the parade.  I wanted to show you that… ah, fuck.”

“You read them?” Steve interrupted hopefully.  He met Bucky’s eyes with his wide blue ones.

Bucky goggled at him for a second.  “Yeah I read them.  I mean, eventually.  Took a… um, a while… before I could.”

Steve quieted him with a gentle kiss.  “You read them.  It’s ok.”

“Now it is, yeah.”  Bucky kissed him back and tightened his arms around Steve.

But Steve shrugged and looked away, blinking.  In a whisper that was rough with emotion, he said, “I was worried you wouldn’t…”

“Come back?”

Steve shrugged again, and then nodded.  He looked back at him beneath wet eyelashes.  “I knew you’d come back.  I mean, guy built like you,” he joked.  He squeezed Bucky’s biceps, the real one and the fake one too.  “I just… I didn’t know if you’d come back to _me_.”

“Hell, Steve, I shoulda written back to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“That I carried you here,” he patted his chest, “the whole time.  In my pocket, and in my… you know.”

Steve’s eyes were shining with emotion.  He cocked his head and grinned, “ _You know_?  Can’t say the mushy stuff out loud?”

Bucky tucked his face against the side of Steve’s neck.  “Guess not.  Maybe I’ll have to write you a letter about it.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“You do that.”

“I will.”

“What, you gotta have the last word or something?”  Bucky kissed his neck, and again, so he felt the huff of laughter rise in Steve’s chest.

“Jerk,” Steve retorted, and his smile was easy to hear.

“Yeah, but your jerk if you’ll have me.  What’s left of me,” Bucky whispered against his skin.

Steve pushed him flat on the bed then.  “Every inch.”

They eyed each other.  Seemed like Steve was doing the same thing he was: trying to figure out what the limits were for this.  Bucky felt like he could crack open and spill every emotion -- joy and lust and sadness and regret and _love_ \-- across Steve like a hurricane.  He wanted to give Steve all of that.  He’d share with him the bad stuff if he wanted to listen.  But he didn’t want to overwhelm him and make him back off.  

Steve’s searching eyes seemed to be saying the same thing.

“I’ll go slow,” Steve said.

He reached for Bucky’s belt.  There were no sudden movements.  Just the hypnotically erotic tug and push of Steve’s hands as they unfastened his pants.  His knuckles pressed against Bucky’s length as he lowered his zipper.

“I dreamed about doing this,” Steve said quietly.

He slipped off Bucky’s lap and unlaced Bucky’s boots.  He tugged off his socks and kissed the bone of his ankle.  The touch of his lips sent an electric buzz up his leg.  Warmth settled in his groin, filling him to hardness.  

Bucky shoved urgently at the waistband of his pants.  He needed to be bare in front of Steve now.  In his mind, a flash of Steve’s drawing… Steve straddling him, looking down at him as they fucked.  

They didn’t have to wait anymore.

Steve yanked at the ankles of Bucky’s pants, sending them flying into the little apartment’s kitchen.  

“Shirt on or off,” Steve asked.  His eyes flashed as he looked Bucky over.  

Bucky heated under Steve’s gaze.  “Off,” he said boldly.  He wanted Steve to see every inch of him.  Even his scars.  If Steve couldn’t take it, Bucky needed to know now.

“Yes,” Steve hissed.  He shucked his own shirt off to the floor.

Their hands worked together to tug at the hem of Bucky’s shirt.  When Bucky emerged naked from it, Steve’s eyes were raking over him.  

“How are you so fucking hot?”

He didn’t fixate on the scarred flesh at Bucky’s shoulder.  He treated it the same as the rest of him, looking over him with thirst that bordered on ridiculous.  

“You should see your face right now,” Bucky grinned.

“You should see _your_ face,” Steve bantered back lamely.  

“Good one.”

Steve rolled his eyes.  

“Your turn,” Bucky said.  He sat up and unbuttoned Steve’s jeans.  His left hand cooperated, to his relief.  “I want to see you too.”

Steve nodded.  He was breathing heavily and flushed red to his chest.  He stepped out of his jeans.

“Can I go down on you?” Steve asked, looking at Bucky’s cock and then dragging his gaze up to Bucky’s face to wait for his answer.

“Since you asked nice,” Bucky shrugged.

“Please, you jerk, may I go down on you?”

Bucky laughed and nodded.  He was an idiot.  He should never have waited so long to come back to this.

Steve licked a line up Bucky’s cock and all laughing ceased.

“Fuck,” Bucky gasped.

Steve hummed and licked another stripe from balls to tip.  He tongued around the head until it was wet with spit.  Only then did he take Bucky’s dick into his mouth.

The groan that escaped from Bucky’s throat was loud.  He threw his head back and fisted the sheet to hold himself back from thrusting deep.  A tearing sound made him struggle to loosen his left hand.

“Sorry,” Bucky gritted out.

Steve laid his hand over Bucky’s left one and he bobbed on Bucky’s cock.  

Bucky felt himself rocketing toward his orgasm within seconds.  Tingling heat pooled in his belly, his lower back, his balls.  Pleasure radiated out toward his extremities.  Phantom warmth lit up his left arm from shoulder to fingertips.  

“Steve!”

Bucky jerked with ecstasy, and Steve’s mouth never left him until the last drop of come was licked clean.  

“Nice,” Steve purred.  He was still kissing Bucky’s skin.  The join of leg to groin.  The softening curve of his balls.  “Can I?” Steve asked softly, pushing Bucky’s knees wide and then up.  

“You can do anything you fucking want,” Bucky sighed happily.  His body was still flooded with endorphins.  His muscles were loose and he let Steve put him the way he wanted him, leg draped over Steve’s shoulder.

“You’re easy to please,” Steve said.  “Let’s see if we can do it again.”

He disappeared against the bed.  Bucky jerked with surprise when he felt Steve’s tongue swipe over his hole.  When he licked a second stripe, Bucky spread himself wider.

“Yeah,” he grunted.

Steve settled in deeper, tonguing across him again.  Every tastebud tickled across him again and again.  Rough enough to light up every nerve ending.  Wet enough to slick him from ass to balls.  

“I want to--” Steve’s words cut off when the tip of his firm tongue pressed against Bucky’s hole.  

He clenched in surprise, then relaxed to let him in.  Again and again, Steve’s tongue thrust against him.  Bucky felt a thousand miles wide, opening himself to that heat and press.  He pulled against the back of his thighs to open wider.  Steve hummed his approval and the vibration made Bucky gasp.  

“Condom,” Bucky begged.  

“You sure?”  Steve kept tonguing at his hole.

Bucky was hard again.  His cock was leaking against his abs.  “I am so fucking sure.”

“Tell me.”  Steve thrust his tongue deep.

He groaned.  “Steve Rogers, get a condom on and fuck me while I watch your damn face.”

Steve groaned then.  “When you say it like that.”

Steve leapt up off the bed, frantically pawing through their discarded clothes to find what they needed.

“You got lube?” Bucky panted.

“Side drawer.  Where the fuck is it?”

“My pocket.  There’s one in my pocket.”  

Bucky clicked open the bottle of slick and spilled a puddle on his right palm.  He circled his fingers around his hole, experimentally pushing one inside.  The smooth glide of it made him try a second.  

“Christ, Buck.”  

Bucky opened his eyes -- he’d squeezed them shut hard when he started fingering himself in earnest -- and found Steve watching him.  

He reached out with his left hand and pulled Steve close by the wrist.  He wasn’t sure he could control his grip like this, so he dropped his hold when Steve climbed back on the bed.  Bucky slicked up Steve’s jacketed cock, his first touch of it in so long, and guided it to himself with his right hand.  The press of it to Bucky’s loosened hole was perfect.  Steve leaned over him and bore down to slowly sink inside of him.

“Go,” Bucky gasped against Steve’s lips.  “I won’t last long.”

Pleasure spiked through him again when Steve snapped his hips.  Bucky curved upward to keep his lips within kissing distance of Steve’s.  He wanted every one of Steve’s breaths inside of himself.  Each stroke of Steve’s cock inside him drove him closer and closer.

“Bucky,” Steve croaked.  

Sweat beaded along Steve’s upper lip.  Bucky licked at it.  He pulled his knees higher so Steve could drive in deeper and deeper.  

“Fuck me,” he begged.

Steve was gasping, “I-- I’m--”

“Do it,” Bucky growled.  

Steve’s rapture was Bucky’s too.  Steve gripped Bucky’s shoulders for leverage and pounded into him.  Bucky shoved his hand between their bodies and let the rhythm fuck his cock into his fist.

“Fuck, I’m gonna--”  

Steve arched back and shuddered.  The sight of it made Bucky’s body clench down.  Come curled across his fist.

When they came down from their high, Steve rose to find them a wash rag and throw the condom in the john.  He wiped Bucky clean and settled in the curve of Bucky’s left arm.

“I’m glad you waited,” Bucky murmured.

“I woulda forever,” Steve smiled against his skin.  “And it’s my turn later, by the way.  Don’t think you get out of this without doing a little work on me too.”

Bucky snorted.  “Can’t wait.”

 

((☆))

 

“Who invented ze fourth floor walk-up?  Because zis is inhumane,” Jacques complained.  “You two pick a basement apartment next time, yes?” he yelled up the stairwell.

“Quit your bellyachin’, and put your back into it,” Dum Dum grunted.  “Gabe and I are the ones with the ass end of this thing.”

The three of them heaved the couch onto the landing with a screech of the legs on the floorboards. Three sweating bottles of beer were waiting for them outside the open apartment door.

“I woulda lent you a hand, but…”  Bucky was grinning from his perch on a ladder, putting a last coat of paint on the wall.  He shrugged with his left arm.  There were white streaks of paint on his shirt, slightly obscuring the _25% OFF_ printed on the chest.

“Har dee har har,” Gabe said, flopping down on the couch and taking a swig.

“Regular comedian,” Steve said fondly.  He tugged at Bucky’s beltloop until Bucky leaned down and kissed him.

Steve had a hammer and nails and went back to hanging a few framed sketches on the opposite wall.  After their picture had shown up in _Get Out_ , people came out of the woodwork to return the drawings that had blown all over Brooklyn.  It was good to have them back.  It reminded them both of what they’d survived to make it to this place.  It was sweeter that way.

 

((☆))

 

After the guys left and Steve was futzing with boxes in the living room, Bucky paused to lean on the fridge and watch him.  Steve was muttering to himself as he unpacked books and art supplies, trying to figure the best place to put them all.  He looked up when he felt Bucky looking and gave him a soft smile before getting back to it.  

Bucky had found a magnetic poetry kit in Steve’s stuff earlier.  He absently moved the tiles around until one caught his eye:   _wait_ .  His heart kicked up a notch.  He scanned the mess of words for… there it was, _you._ He tried pushing it with his left fingers but it stuck onto the synthetic-coated metal.  

“Fucker,” he mumbled, pulling it off with his right and putting it back on the freezer door.  

 _You do not have 2 wait N E more_ , he spelled out.   _Love U._

Then he walked over, silently laced his new fingers with Steve’s flesh ones, and led him to the bedroom to christen it home.

**Author's Note:**

> A summary of chapter warnings:  
> Chapter 1: Steve gets somewhat injured in a fistfight defending the honor of a friend.  
> Chapter 2: No warnings.  
> Chapter 3: Bucky and some of the (minor) Howlies go to war. Not all make it out alive, and Bucky is injured and held in captivity.  
> Chapter 4: Bucky suffers from PTSD and attends a therapy group.  
> Chapter 5: No warnings.


End file.
